Week 12: Review

Today signals one week to go before the Around the Bay 30K race, so just as I was ratcheting the mileage back up I'll be tapering off a bit to prepare for it. This week was scheduled to be my last 55 mile week, with a 20 mile long run to cap it off. With the race next week, however, I added a couple of more miles to my mid-week runs and then scaled the long run back to 13 miles to give the legs a rest. The end result was a little over 50 miles for the week (81km to be precise).

With that said, to help prepare for the race I tried to focus on routes with a significant number of hills in them. This morning's run, for instance, had four reasonably substantial hills (460m/+4.8%, 600m/+5.7%, 939m/+3.9% and 2216m/+0.9%) tucked into the third quarter of the route. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get an elevation plot for the ATB route so I'm not entirely sure how big/long the hills in the back half of the route are. Either way, I'm a lot more comfortable with them at this juncture so hopefully my preparation will be sufficient ;)


Cycling-wise, I did both 50km rides on Monday and Friday, but took Wednesday off as I figured it was unwise to do it as well as the 11 miles that I was scheduled to run in the afternoon. As I figured that the others at my Running Room group wouldn't be interested in the ~18km that I was planning on doing I headed out about 50 minutes early and ran 6 miles in the vicinity of the store (at a 4:40/km pace), and then another 6 with the group (at a 5:08/km pace). It was a little longer than expected but, as mentioned above, it allowed me to scale back a bit on the mileage this morning so it paid off.

At this juncture, my legs are a bit tired but nothing specifically is sore so the tapering this week should freshen them up in time for the race. The knee is mostly better, but there still is a bit of a twinge in it so I'll have to be careful with it. I'm still stretching it regularly to make sure that it continues on it's path, and hopefully the rest this week will help with this as well.

Weekly Totals:
Running: 81.0km (50.3mi)
Walking: 5.2km (3.2mi)
Cycling: 100.0km (62.1mi)
Total: 186.2km (115.7mi)

Year to Date:
Running: 723.4km (449.5mi)
Walking: 140.3km (87.2mi)
Cycling: 885.0km (549.9mi)
Total: 1748.7km (1,086.6mi)

As for the upcoming week, I'll play it by ear and see what feels right however I'm tentatively planning on just transplanting the final week of Pfitzinger's schedule in place of the scheduled sessions. The basic layout is the same, and it's just a matter of reducing the mileage on some of these days. I'll also be significantly scaling back on the cycling mileage, as it's not really necessary for race preparation so it's better to use that time for rest and recovery.

Wednesday will be the largest in flux, as I'm definitely going to be heading out to the Running Room and will likely do whatever the group is interested in. A number of other group members are also running this race, so I hope to figure out what they're doing so I can figure out the logistical details of what I'm going to do on Saturday and Sunday.

Upcoming Week:
Mon 30K Cycle (Easy)
Tue 6mi (9.7K) Recovery w/5x600m @ 5K Race Pace
Wed 7mi (11.26K) w/2mi (3.2K) @ 30K Race Pace
Thurs Rest
Fri 5mi (8K) Recovery w/6x100m
Sat 4mi (6.4K) Recovery
Sun 30K Race (Around the Bay)

As for the race itself, the plan right now is to target a steady 4:45/km pace, or roughly a 2h23m finish. With the hills in the latter stages of the race, I may have to pull back a bit on that target a bit, but like any race I'll have to see how it feels once I get out there. I do have to figure out my fuelling and hydration strategies, but I've still got some time to think about that.